A Fighter on Home Ground Ivanisevic, His Fans, His Family, and the War

Published: February 20, 1993

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In 1991, he stepped into and out of the Top 10. The war was under way. For 11 months he could not return home. The phone lines to Croatia were dead. He moved among the tournaments, struggling with his game, unable to contact his family.

But they found their ways around. His sister's family left Split for a time, and his father joined him in Milan, where Srdjan suffered a ruptured Achilles' tendon while playing tennis. He was recuperating in his son's Monte Carlo apartment when the first Serbian shells struck Split early Nov. 6, 1991. After several hours, Croatian ships and anti-aircraft guns drove away the attack. Though there has been no further fighting in Split, its residents spent many nights in bomb shelters. Finally, his mother escaped aboard a refugee ship and joined Srdjan in Monaco.

His family has since returned to Split. Many of Ivanisevic's friends have entered the war. "They tell me a lot of bad things, things that are hard to tell -really disgusting things," he says. "The guys I know fighting, they're all alive. But it's like a lottery, you know."

Would he be fighting, if not for tennis?

"Probably I would go to fight," he says. "You never know what you would do. They call you to fight, you know."

His struggle to win far-away tennis matches might have felt ludicrous compared with the war at home. Then he discovered that, when he won, he was asked questions about the war. In answering them, he felt better - attacking the Serbs, defending Croatia. He was doing something. "My racket is my gun," he said, over and over.

His racket fired 957 aces last year, including 206 at Wimbledon. He was heard all over the world.

"In the beginning it was tough for me to play," Ivanisevic says. "I come to the court and I'm thinking a lot about the problems at home. I change a lot because of this, and because of Bob [Brett, his coach]. It makes me tougher. I try to fight to the last point. I see people fighting here. I want to fight like they're fighting."

In Paris, his warmup suit read, "Stop Aggression Against Croatia." Before his country was recognized in January 1992 by the European Community, he convinced the ATP Tour to list him not as a Yugoslav, but as a Croat. He returned home each time to find more fans, more kids playing tennis.

In January 1992, the tournament at Adelaide, Australia, received death threats against Ivanisevic. Policemen escorted him into the stadium and had a car waiting for him at a special exit. To that point he had won only two titles. He might have wilted into the background. Instead, he won the tournament.

"I wasn't worried," he says. "The two policemen, I go to the practicing range with them. They show me how to shoot, just for fun. They let me shoot machine gun. It was tough to control, but, oh, nice feeling. All the bullets coming out. I was thinking it nice to have some Serbs standing in front of me."

But for the UN troops in their camouflage uniforms, there is little sign of danger in Split. Yet the dam at Peruca, some 60 kilometers to the north, has been threatening to flood its southern valley for several weeks. FIBA, the world basketball federation, has transferred European games out of the city. Ivanisevic comes home along the same circuitous routes, on the same crowded airplanes braved by everyone else.

At times he pleads for intervention from the United States: "Somebody got to do something, or a lot of people going to die." Then he turns around: "Maybe it best if we fight face to face with Serbs. We don't want to give them one square meter of our land."